Devotional.
Since starting Faithful Grace, I've read more emails and messages than I can count from readers who've lost someone.
A husband. A parent. A child. A pet. A friend.
The specifics change. The ache doesn't.
I want to tell you a smaller story. Not because it compares. But because it's the one I have.
Four years ago we were expecting a little girl. The scan said so.
We spent six months talking to her every day, praying for her, singing to her, imagining her life. She had a name. We pictured who she would become. She was, in every real sense, part of our family before she was born.
Two weeks before the due date, a second scan told us they'd got it wrong... It was a boy.
Logically, we had good news. A healthy baby was coming.
But in those two weeks between the news and his arrival, we were grieving.
A little girl who had been fully alive in our minds had suddenly vanished.
Except she didn't vanish. She had never even existed.
There was no one to bury. No one to talk about. Just a soft, strange absence that didn't fit any category of loss.
When Theo was born, the grief mostly quieted.
He is a joy and a gift (Theodore means God's gift).
But sometimes, years later, a memory will surface. The way I pictured reading to her. I meet someone with her name. I'd almost forgotten I used to carry it.
I tell you this not because it is the same as the grief you may be holding.
It isn't.
Losing someone who actually walked the earth, whose voice you can still hear, whose chair is still in the house, is a weight of another order.
But I tell you because I've learned a small thing about memories that hurt.
God doesn't come to erase them. He comes to sit inside them with you.
If the memories are still raw today, you don't need to hurry. He is not hurrying you.
He is simply, patiently, there.
Prayer.
Lord, breathe peace into the memories that still hurt, the ones that resurface unexpectedly, that sting when they come back, that hold pain I haven't fully processed or healed from.
Some memories don't fade with time, they stay sharp, vivid, triggering emotions that feel as fresh as when the hurt was new, and I need Your peace to touch them.
Teach me that healing memories doesn't mean erasing them or pretending they don't exist, but inviting Your peace into the pain they still carry.
Breathing peace into memories means You can change how they affect me, reduce their power to hurt me, bring comfort to places where remembering still wounds.
Help me not avoid the memories that hurt but bring them to You, trusting that Your peace can reach into the past and heal what's still broken there.
Remind me that You're present in my past just as much as my present, that You can meet me in memories and bring peace that wasn't there when the hurt first happened.
Give me courage to let You into the painful places, patience with healing that happens gradually, and trust that Your peace can reach memories I thought would hurt forever.
Let Your peace breathe into the memories that still hurt, bringing comfort where there's been pain, healing where there's been wound, peace where there's been turmoil.
In Jesus' name,
Amen.
